The Korea Arts Management Service (KAMS) and ArtReview present a special screening at Art Basel Hong Kong: Life as a System: Time, Labor, and Storytelling in Contemporary Moving Image. Followed by a post-screening talk with the artists, moderated by editor-in-chief Mark Rappolt.
Life as a System: Time, Labor, and Storytelling in Contemporary Moving Image dissects the invisible architectures that govern our collective existence. Eschewing linear narrative for the fragmented logic of the digital age, the program investigates how the rhythms of labor, the flow of capital, and the structures of technology sculpt the contours of daily life. Here, the moving image becomes a forensic tool, exposing the underlying codes – economic, ecological, and temporal – that define reality. The works suggest that our lived experience is not a natural occurrence, but a construct maintained by systems that often remain dangerously unseen.
The screening, showing ikkibawiKrrr’s Dances with Trash2024 and Ayoung Kim’s Al-Mather Plot 1991, juxtaposes the macro-political with the intimate residues of consumption. Ayoung Kim synthesizes personal memory and geopolitical history, utilizing generative AI and Lidar scanning to map the complex legacy of the oil economy and the “Deus ex Machina” of global capital. In contrast, the collective ikkibawiKrrr envisions a post-human landscape where the discarded remnants of bankruptcy take center stage. Through the rhythmic choreography of debris, they locate a strange vitality within the ruin, proposing an ecological connection forged not through utility, but through the poetic agency of the abandoned.
Auditorium, N101B, Level 1, Hong Kong Convention & Exhibition Centre. Free public access, limited seating. 26 March 2026, 6-7.30pm. Find out more.
